RES: RES: RES: [lbo-talk] Keiretsu Capital

[Alexandre Fenelon]

I don't think factoring them in would change very much. Unless we're talking
about the top-top of the CPSU hierarchy, the elite (political, scientific,
cultural) had better access to housing and the special shops where you could
buy Western goods legally, but I don't think your average apparatchik or
Soviet physicist was living high on the hog. Certainly nothing like today --
Alla Pugacheva (Russia's Bette Midler) used to pull in maybe $100 a concert.
Now she must get $20,000. At the very least.

-Probably you´re right, as events in the extremes of Lorenz curve don´t
-change too much the Ginni index. Unless the elite (say, the 20-40% richer
-USSR citizens) received massive amounts of non monetary privileges, you
-woudln´t have too much change. Still, it´s possible that taking into
-account those privileges could result in a Ginni index close to 25-30,
-similar to Scandinavian countries (Eastern Europe index Ginni were
-close to 20-25). Still, I think those non monetary privileges are
-largely forgotten in those calculations both in the East and in the West.

It is another issue that, because CPSU members were able to travel abroad,
they would bring back goods that could be resold on the black market. As a
matter of fact, because in the 80s-early 90s coming from the West meant that
a good would be superior in people's eyes

-But, weren´t western made goods really superior????

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